How hard is it to write an ebuild? How much effort is it to upload/distribute it? There ya go - the package management is so easy almost any user can contribute, this is why Gentoo has such an huge number of packages. That, IMHO, is why Portage is one of the best package managers.

Brad_________________Microsoft - bringing the pain right into your home since 1982

I tried and successfully installed about every distro under the sun, including rh, mandrake, slackware and debian and gentoo was the distro that I liked.

Now theres people saying I have "too much time on my hands" or im "stupid".

Seriously hows someone who posts trash talk about an OPERATING SYSTEM on SLASHDOT going to go and say people have too much time on their hands? Little ironic if you ask me ;)

that's what i did. Then i got to FreeBSD and was like "omg i luv u!!!!!!!!!xoxoxox". Later i wished it got updates sooner and spported accelerated graphics and smbfs so i found a bsd like linux. and an now like "omg i luv u!!!!!!!!!xoxoxox"._________________Aim:gsfgf0

[rant]
As for "my distro is better than your distro" - all I can say is bollocks. I hate these people who can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that it's all about personal choice. I chose Gentoo after trying (several) other distros as it fits my needs better than all of the others do (space for example is a prime requisite on a laptop). If they want to go and install any of the 'complete' (as I've seen them described on another forum) distro's and waste space / not have a complete clue about what's on their system then fine by me... JUST LEAVE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!!!
[/rant]

[rant]
As for "my distro is better than your distro" - all I can say is bollocks. I hate these people who can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that it's all about personal choice. I chose Gentoo after trying (several) other distros as it fits my needs better than all of the others do (space for example is a prime requisite on a laptop). If they want to go and install any of the 'complete' (as I've seen them described on another forum) distro's and waste space / not have a complete clue about what's on their system then fine by me... JUST LEAVE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!!!
[/rant]

damn right, reason i chose gentoo, ive only got a 14gb hdd on my laptop i need to save as much space as i can for stuff like oggs _________________Some people go to counselling,
others use linux

It is normal to see people criticise Gentoo, Cause, for examples, A Red Hat Advocate would dislike Mandrake. A Debian would not like Redhat. Windows Advocate would dislike Linux, FreeBSD would dislike Linux.

Sometimes criticism is a way to let us know what others think of us and perhaps could improve what we are.

I tried RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE before delving into Gentoo. Portage is awesome, but the best part of Gentoo is definitely the community.

Amen to that.
A hearty "Me, too!" Though I'd gone from RH, Slack, OpenLinux 1.0, Suse (all back in the early-mid 90s), Mandrake, Sorcerer/Lunar, FreeBSD to Gentoo.
FreeBSD just didn't have current enough software (i really got tired of having to do everything in Linux emulation mode - if I want emulation, I'll emerge the Vic20 emulator-relive my computing roots), not enough hardware support and borked ports.

A faster broadband connection is only helpful for binary packages. Gentoo takes 99% of its time compiling Gnome. Gentoo is just a system for stupid people with too much time on their hands. The only achievement of that distribution is that it makes installing Linux a difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone process that gives you bragging rights.

Yes, I did install Gentoo. Twice. I deleted it both times after figuring out that it would take another 5 hours to recompile gnome/mozilla/konqueror/insert-app-name-here because the package was some buggy pre-release alpha version.

Finally, they can't even get portage right -- it is one of the most unintuitive systems ever created. Why not make it more interactive and customizable? It's about as painful to change the options for building an app as it is with a source RPM. Unless you invest hours in reading crappy documentation and hacking portage scripts, you get all the disadvantages of using RPMs (lack of configurability) combined with the disadvantages of compiling from source (time waste).

What the hell is wrong with just using a normal distribution like Mandrake or Debian, people? Does gedit really need all the optimization it can get from compiling it for a P4 with SSE2 extensions enabled? What if you decide to upgrade to an Athlon?

Its funny just looking at it

Indeed! It says it's not customizable... I have been using linux distributions since 1998 and must say that Gentoo is the most customizable and 'bug-free'. It doesn't mean that it hasn't bugs, just that those bugs are solved in matter of days, while in other distros, these bugs sometimes are never solved until the next version of the distro. It perhaps depends on why you use linux, well, I'm a programmer among other computer-related things (like software disigner and blah blah blah 5-year degree) and must say that the simple fact to see that things go compiled and configured just calms me down... there are no unexpected errors... let's put as example the well-known RedHat KDE menu bug, the euro-key in console for Debian & slackware, the small-package-providing of other distros as archlinux (no, it does not cover my needs as programmer... I do need testing tools). And the best of all is that because of the fact that everything that gets into my system is compiled first, it assures that if I get a tarball that is not in gentoo (everyday harder to find one ) or to compile my programs _it_just_WORKS_ ... While in distros like Debia, Slackware, RedHat, Archlinux, ... (won't say mandrake... that would be like admiting I like windoze) I always fall into a dependency failure, unsupported versions from here and there and that's what desperates me in other distros that does not in Gentoo.

I also would like to say that there are people in http://www.etse.urv.es (that's the politecnic/engineering school) that plan to precompile almost every gentoo source and bring it binary... a hard project, but eager to achieve it

If Gentoo wasn't, in their minds, either a serious compeditor or a real threat to their userbase, they wouldn't have any motivation to startup this distro war. This Gentoo flaming is only proof that Gentoo has really made its mark.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." (Gandhi)

If Gentoo weren't so awesome, the people flaming it would just ignore it. If they want to flame it, then so be it. Ultimately, it's only their loss._________________"Nothing says 'Obey me' like a bloody head on a post." - Stewie